Fear and Political Wisdom

The English writer E. M. Forster said there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t say that. Nonetheless, I will say there are two kinds of people in the world, with respect to understanding the social order. The first are those whose earliest and deepest perception is that there is something arbitrary, fragile, and potentially threatening about the way society is ordered. The second kind of person perceives a natural and assured ordering of things, beginning with parental authority, and only later emerges into an adolescent awareness that the way things are and the way people say things must be “ain’t necessarily so.”

My impression is that Michael Novak is the first kind of person. The impression is reinforced by his new book, Will It Liberate? Questions about Liberation Theology (Paulist). It is a book both brilliant and wise. It is brilliant in exposing the ways that liberation theology, which typically employs Marxist analysis and frequently backs Marxist-Leninist causes, leads to very bad consequences for the poor whom the liberationists claim to champion. It is wise in its understanding that a humane social order begins with a salutary fear of the inhumanity to which humanity is prone. This latter truth comes as no surprise to those who know that the beginning of all wisdom is the fear of God. The fear experienced in the encounter with the Absolute is related to the fear of power in the hands of mortals who, unlike God, are perfect neither in justice nor in mercy. Being mortals ourselves, we know the ways of man. And, if we do not know it from knowing ourselves, we know it from even the most cursory reading of what people have done to one another.

RJ

About the Author

Richard John Neuhaus

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The English writer E. M. Forster said there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t say that. Nonetheless, I will say there are two kinds of people in the world, with respect to understanding the social order. The first are those whose earliest and deepest perception is that there is something arbitrary, fragile, and potentially threatening about the way society is ordered. The second kind of person perceives a natural and assured ordering of things, beginning with parental authority, and only later emerges into an adolescent awareness that the way things are and the way people say things must be “ain’t necessarily so.”

My impression is that Michael Novak is the first kind of person. The impression is reinforced by his new book, Will It Liberate? Questions about Liberation Theology (Paulist). It is a book both brilliant and wise. It is brilliant in exposing the ways that liberation theology, which typically employs Marxist analysis and frequently backs Marxist-Leninist causes, leads to very bad consequences for the poor whom the liberationists claim to champion. It is wise in its understanding that a humane social order begins with a salutary fear of the inhumanity to which humanity is prone. This latter truth comes as no surprise to those who know that the beginning of all wisdom is the fear of God. The fear experienced in the encounter with the Absolute is related to the fear of power in the hands of mortals who, unlike God, are perfect neither in justice nor in mercy. Being mortals ourselves, we know the ways of man. And, if we do not know it from knowing ourselves, we know it from even the most cursory reading of what people have done to one another.